No Leo-SRK union!

Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t going to team up, as suggested by writer Mushtaq Sheikh, with Shah Rukh Khan in Xtreme City. Even as the Indian media is going ballistic over the Hollywood star’s role of a New York cop in the movie, his New York-based publicists insists the reports are “not true.”

Sheikh who has penned the script with Hollywood writer-director Paul Schrader, had claimed that Leonardo was ‘in’ the film: “It will still take some time for us to go on floors with the film. As of now, we can only confirm SRK and Leonardo DiCaprio in the cast.”

He further stated in the interview that the idea of Xtreme City sparked off last year when SRK met David Weisman, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader and Leonardo at the Berlin Film Festival. It is not a regular gangster movie but revolves around two men from radically different worlds, an Indian and an American who served in the UN peacekeeping forces in Somalia in the 1990s.

“The American saves the Indian’s life and brings him home. They then go their own separate ways, with the American becoming a cop in New York, the Indian a ‘bhai’ (don) in Mumbai. Many years later, the American comes to India and is drawn into an alien world,” is how Sheikh has explained the story. Reports suggest that the screenplay was officially presented to SRK, Martin and Leonardo during the festival. Schrader, who is known for penning cult films such as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, will direct the film.

Despite repeated attempts, Sheikh remained unavailable for on comment on Leonardo’s non-involvement in the film. However, Scorsese will co-produce the film, agrees his publicist Michelle Benson.